At least walking is free.
Adam's feet felt heavy as he trudged down the campus sidewalk. There weren't many people around this early in the morning, which was both a blessing and a curse. It kept him from running into familiar faces that might want to offer sympathy, but it also meant he was alone with his thoughts – which at the moment, made for poor company.
He almost regretted heading out today. If not for the fact that staying inside his claustrophobic, foul-smelling dorm room was more a disheartening prospect than leaving, Adam probably would’ve resigned himself to a day in bed. Unfortunately, his housing situation was sketchy enough that he'd basically forced himself outside in order to keep his sanity and sense of smell.
Problem was, he really didn’t have many options for where to go. It had to be somewhere off campus, so that he wouldn’t run into any sympathetic faces, and it couldn’t be anywhere that cost money. There just weren't any good places for him to wander to.
Which is why he settled for a bad place, instead.
An antiquated, run-down store stood proudly in front of him, like a wrinkled storyteller with a lifetime of experiences to share. Adam was no stranger, having visited it twice a week for the past two years since getting into art school.
This visit would be more bittersweet than usual. He barely had any money left to buy supplies, but maybe going there would clear his mind a little. And just as importantly, he wouldn’t meet anyone he knew there. The art store wasn’t exactly...upscale. To Adam's more spoiled classmates, it was shady as all hell.
To him, though, it was cheap and within walking distance.
Not that he’d tell its shopkeeper that. “Whatcha here for this time, Adam?” the old, friendly man asked, without turning around. He would often be up on a ladder that was just too small, trying to reach a shelf for some reason or another. “Need more brushes? Ink? Canvases?”
Adam didn’t need any of those. He wanted them, of course, but he didn’t have the money to waste and he couldn’t justify it when his degree was focused on digital art. His tablet was enough – unless his classes demanded otherwise.
Which they will. And I don’t know how I’m going to pay for that.
“Not right now. I just...” Adam paused, searching for an excuse to be there. “Have to draw something soon. Was hoping to look at the local paintings for inspiration.”
Still atop the ladder, the old man looked around to raise an eyebrow at him. “What, got a contest coming up or something? Didn’t you just get done with another one?”
Adam felt his fist tighten at the memory. “Just finished it.”
“Too bad you didn’t win. Really thought you had that one.”
So did I. Wouldn’t have spent three weeks barely sleeping to work on it otherwise. That goddamn prize money...I was right there. I earned it.
He did his best to clear his thoughts. It wouldn’t do good to focus on that, and it was too soon, anyway. His face was still aching from the punch he’d gotten afterward – not that the physical pain was going to be what lasted longest.
“It was close,” Adam said, faking a smile. “But sometimes things don’t end up the way you want.”
“At least your friend won it, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. Eric did.”
“Good – always stings less if a friend wins instead of some random fuckwit, eh?” The old man barked out a hoarse laugh. “I’m going to be organizing things for a while. Just go to the back and take as much of a look as you want.”
“Thanks. I’ll be careful.”
“Don’t even bother. Most of what’s there is worthless.”
Adam allowed himself a sardonic laugh. “Wouldn’t have thought a guy who keeps a local art shop would have that mindset. What happened to the good ole' adage of ‘Art is about more than just popularity?’ What about their meaning, or how beautiful they are?”
The Old Man snorted. “Pff. They fail in that regard too. They’re ugly, dirty...falling apart. Most of them aren’t even originals, just copies of unknown paintings that no one wanted. Can you believe that? A copy of a failure.”
“Why do you keep them around, then?”
He shrugged. “Someone has to. Might as well be me.”
“And I might as well be the one to try and get some inspiration out of them,” Adam said, grinning.
“Do as you wish.”
Adam pushed aside a purple curtain behind the counter – and started coughing before he’d even turned the lights on. I just cleaned this place for him last week. How the hell is it already dusty?
Although, if he was being honest, it wasn’t something that upset him. He appreciated the distraction. Anything was better than thinking about that competition and how he should have won, how everything would be better now if only–
He shook his head and retrieved his drawing tablet from his backpack. Gotta focus. Work is the best antidote for sorrow.
The Old Man may have been a bit harsh when judging his paintings, but he also hadn’t been unfair. Most of them were downright ancient, painted on dusty canvases that looked like they were dirty before any paint ever dried on them. A few were torn, as if they’d been attacked with knives.
“I almost feel sorry for them,” Adam muttered, shifting through the loosely-arranged paintings. “Even copies of failures deserve better than this.”
He decided to clean up a little, brushing off clumps of dust as he went. It felt nice to do something for someone. Gave him a sense of purpose when he sorely needed it. He continued for several minutes, spending more time on cleaning than looking at any of the paintings.
It wasn't long before his thoughts returned to keep him company again. Adam passed the time with fantasies of quitting art school, the option growing more appealing the longer he considered it. On a normal day he would’ve gone on with his quiet cleaning for a few hours, told the Old Man he couldn’t find anything too inspiring, then headed home.
If not for that one painting.
“Has this always been here?” Adam muttered to himself. “I don’t think so. Would’ve noticed last time. It’s kind of hard to miss.”
Among those dusty paintings from a bygone era, there was one that stood out. It was hanging on the wall, illuminated by a single weak light positioned above it, and encased in a thick metal frame that looked far more expensive than anything else Adam had ever seen at the store. He blinked a few times before studying the painting in closer detail. Did I seriously miss this the last couple times I was here? No, this has got to be new.
The strange thing was, Adam couldn’t seem to remember it being there when he'd started cleaning. Guess I'm more out of it than I thought. I must be crazy to have missed this.
How else could he have overlooked a painting this beautiful and haunting?
It portrayed a mighty stone castle, the colors appearing like a sort of everlasting abyss that had befallen that world. Yet the painting itself was not dark, depicting a foggy white light bursting out from behind the castle and beneath the rock cliff, creating an impression of a frigid, misty morning. Blue was its primary color, Adam noticed, and that hue only added to the sensation of chilling cold he felt upon looking at it.
There was no snow anywhere on the painting, but that blueish fog – so dark it neared black – and the whiteness touching it all combined to create a feeling of isolation he couldn’t quite place. Above the castle there were birds, ruling the skies above them as they faded into the misty morning sun. And at the very bottom of the picture was a simple man, draped in shadow and lacking in detail, gazing up at the castle of grandeur and seeming all too insignificant before it.
The painting wasn’t a particularly skillful piece of art. Adam recognized most of the techniques used – he could probably paint something like that himself. But there was something about the way that lonely painting stood out, alone amongst a gallery of misfits, which caught his attention.
Maybe it was his stress from the competition.
Maybe it was his lack of sleep.
Maybe it was simply how overwhelmed he felt at the moment.
Whatever his reason was, Adam felt compelled to reach out and touch the painting, despite knowing that doing so could damage it. There was a childlike wonder pushing him forward, as if a part of him wondered if he would get sucked into the painting the moment his fingers grazed it.
He was even more surprised when that actually happened.
Adam had spent enough time daydreaming near paintings to imagine what it would feel like in a thousand different ways – and all of them were wrong. It wasn’t like an invisible hand that grasped his wrist and pulled him through a portal. Instead, the first thing he felt was that air was no longer entering his lungs. Adam barely avoided panicking, thinking maybe that the shock had merely caught his breath. That was when he realized, to his horror, that the lack of air in his lungs didn’t even feel uncomfortable.
Keep calm, he thought. If I can make my way to the old man, he’ll call for an ambulance. He tried to take a step forward – and couldn’t. His feet wouldn’t budge. When he glanced down, he instantly knew why.
His legs were dissolving.
Small bubbles, so small that perhaps particles was a more fitting word, were floating away from his body. It was a constant stream of parts of him floating from his body and into the painting. And it was more than just his legs – every bit of his body had started to dissolve in the same way.
Frantic, inane thoughts filled his mind, but before he could process any of them, he saw something that made him stop. The particles weren’t bubbles; they were pigments. Every atom in his body was being transformed into paint, then floating into that beautiful portrait of a castle flanked by cliffs.
It was as if the entire room around him had been turned into a canvas. Slowly, drop by drop, his body was leaving this world. Adam's mouth opened and he felt the sensation of his jaw moving, but nothing came out. His voice – his screams – were silenced.
Soon, even minor movements became impossible, his body refusing to cooperate with his attempts to escape. Adam could do nothing except continue to stare ahead. The painting grew larger every second, almost like it was coming closer to him. It couldn’t have been more than a few moments, but to him it felt longer than an eternity.
And when he came to his senses, he was falling.
Time ceased to exist. Direction was meaningless. He was falling, falling, falling, into an endless void of darkness, devoid of up and down.
WHAT IS THE COLOR OF YOUR SOUL?
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once. At first Adam felt it had originated from inside his head, but that couldn’t be right. If that were the case, then it wouldn’t feel like his entire body was shaking when the vibrations of sound bounced off his flesh. Had there been solid ground beneath his feet, Adam would have fallen to his knees.
Lacking so much as footing, he spun around in the endless void, hoping to regain some measure of balance. His momentum never stopped. With every desperate movement Adam only spun faster.
WHAT IS THE COLOR—OF—YOUR—SOUL?
Adam immediately stopped spinning, as if inertia itself felt scared of the voice. Panicked thoughts came to him – and he discarded them all. Something deep inside him knew that if he did anything but answer, right now, his life would end then and there.
“I...don’t know,” Adam managed to say. His lips didn’t move, but he still heard his own voice loud and clear. “I have no idea what that means.”
THE WORLD IS STAINED. WHAT COLOR WILL YOUR SOUL PAINT OVER IT?
The void descended into a kaleidoscope of colors that flanked Adam from all directions. There were colors he was used to, like red, blue, and green, but there were also colors he’d never seen before. Colors he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
And he was supposed to pick one of them? When his sense of reality had been ripped from his consciousness? It was more than unfair; it was impossible. He was a bad artist, but an artist nonetheless.
Picking just one felt like a crime.
“I’m not a color,” Adam declared. “I’m a painter.”
YOU ARE? The voice appeared amused. FINE.
And so Adam started falling once more.
–
His eyes crept open.
Adam’s first thought upon waking was to check his backpack. There was no way he could afford another drawing tablet. His heart skipped a beat when he located his shattered cellphone first. Just as his anxiety was about to overwhelm him, Adam let out a euphoric, almost manic laughter when he found that his tablet was miraculously untouched. Somehow, despite falling from hundreds of feet above the air, the screen didn’t have so much as a scratch on it. That was some damn good luck.
It was only when he heard his own voice that he realized that he hadn’t been hurt either. And that he was able to breathe again. At the time, those concerns had seemed secondary.
I don’t have any broken bones. Nothing even hurts. It’s like I didn’t fall from the sky at all.
He’d been willing to accept getting hurt. Broken bones were expensive, but you could get the treatment done and deal with the debt later. Equipment was much harder to finance. Still, Adam was definitely relieved that he wouldn’t have to make his next bank statement any more frightening to look at. Not having to drag himself toward an ambulance was a win, too.
On second thought, now that he looked at his surroundings, Adam wasn’t even sure where he even would've gone to find a road. He was in the middle of what appeared to be an extremely dense forest, which made his fall all the more puzzling. The trees were tall enough to block out most of the sun, allowing only small, filtered bits of faint light to illuminate the area. It was dark enough that Adam had to pay close attention to confirm it was daytime.
There was no forest anywhere near his college town. And how come he didn’t remember hitting those trees on his way down? None of this was adding up.
Maybe he hadn’t fallen after all. Could be I was drugged somehow, he reasoned. That’d make more sense – the old man always did have some weird stuff at his shop. If this whole thing is just one hell of a trip, that would explain everything.
It was a rational, logical explanation. Adam still couldn’t make himself believe it. Everything around him felt entirely too real, and his mind was perfectly clear. There was no delay between his thoughts, no irrational leaps from one point to another. This didn’t feel like he’d been drugged; if anything, he felt more awake than he had been in months.
That was what made the realization of a gigantic footprint on the ground all the worse.
Adam stared at the indentation for a time, assessing its shape, until he was forced to admit that it was in fact a footprint. One that was bigger and unlike any animal he knew of. Theories bounced around in his head. He thought of ways to make the situation fit his established worldview, like hammering square pegs into a round hole.
He was so fixated on it that he almost didn't notice when a nearby tree started to rise from the ground. In what could only be described as standing up, the tree pulled its own roots out, dirt flying every which way. Adam stared open-mouthed as the creature walked away with a casual stride. Like this was any other day.
After seeing that...well, he reached his inevitable conclusion.
“Ah,” he said aloud, to no one in particular. “I'm in a different world.”
His realization came to him abruptly, yet calmly. The chain of events that had led him here was apparent. He’d been sucked into a painting, spoken with an otherworldly voice, and then dropped from the sky like a comet, somehow emerging unhurt from his fall. It wasn't a dream, or a hallucination, or a government conspiracy, or a prank. Everything could be explained if he accepted the simple fact that he was no longer on Earth.
If this giant footprint – larger than six feet wide and tall – belonged to some kind of supernatural monster, it would frankly make more sense than a conspiracy theory about drugs or an overly-complicated prank. It wasn’t like anyone cared about him enough to go that far for a single prank, anyway. Well, except for Eric.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Maybe he could've still justified the whole thing as some kind of weird, high-tech theme park if he was desperate to cling to a measure of normalcy...but Adam didn’t feel particularly attached to normalcy anymore.
No, he wouldn't avert his eyes away from the truth. He was in another world – and just as importantly, he was in danger. It was highly possible that he wouldn't live through the next hour. If more creatures like that walking tree or whatever made the footprint came around, they'd probably rip him to pieces. That was...
Intriguing.
He should have been horrified, nervous, stuttering in a panic. Instead, Adam felt strangely at peace. Sure, he wasn't optimistic about his survival chances, but that was no big deal. Even the urgency of the situation couldn't make him lose his composure.
Because he was alone.
Art projects are solitary by nature. Adam hardly ever worked alongside other people. And what little free time he had was spent on a part-time job so he could barely afford the privilege of being in debt. Such was college these days. I could still talk to Eric, but...
He'd gotten used to being alone. So used to it that sometimes he wondered if he’d forgotten how to be human. Without other people around, his emotions felt muted, like a distant echo of what he was supposed to be. Nothing was joyful enough to make him jump up and cheer. Nothing was sad enough to make him cry.
It was different when he was around people he knew. With them, he felt more...himself. The smiles and cries came more naturally. Unfortunately, he'd gotten less and less of that as time went on. On the rare chance that he did get to see them, it was almost like he was out of practice, putting on an act to simulate what a person should feel. As if being alone was eroding who he was.
And god knows he had been alone lately.
Maybe that was why he didn’t feel particularly concerned about the prospect of being in another world and surrounded by monsters. Maybe that was why instead of panicking, he felt something resembling a smile creep onto his face when he saw a creature lurking out from behind a tree.
“I was right,” Adam muttered, pleased to note there was still delight in his voice. He examined the monster with clinical interest as it began to approach. “You’re not the thing that made this footprint though, are you?”
This one seemed too small. It was closer to a lion – at least in size. Its shape was bizarre, having an elongated middle that stretched on for at least two meters, like someone had started to draw a lion and copy-pasted the torso many times over. Where its eyes and mouth should have been, there were gaps, vacant holes that Adam could see through entirely, images of foliage poking out from behind.
Every inch of its body felt like it was oscillating in the wind, closer to ink than flesh, distorting itself away from the creature and then forcing itself back into place. Like a displaced polygon having its mistaken movement undone, then redone all over again, endlessly. The creature was blacker than black, less a color and more the absence of light, so dark it reminded Adam of the time he’d worked with that facsimile of Black 3.0. When it snarled, its skin ripped open into a wound, healing when it closed – before tearing again for another pained scream.
It was so ugly, monstrous, and a stain on reality itself. Even looking at it felt dangerous. Sweat began running down Adam's brow just from the pressure of maintaining eye contact. His legs trembled, his stomach threatened to empty itself, and he thought:
Hmm. Wonder how I would draw it.
For half a moment, he considered climbing up a tree to get a better view. That would let him depict the monster as accurately as possible. New sights like these didn't come around often.
Then he felt his shoulder burn, as if it had been bitten by jaws made of acid.
He stared at the open wound with a sort of numb confusion. The creature hadn’t approached him yet. There hadn’t been, there couldn’t have been a bite of any sort. It was still too far away.
That was when Adam noticed the ground around the monster. As it stood, flickering inked polygons occasionally fell from its skin, altering whatever grass it touched. Corrupt was the first word that jumped to mind, although stain was probably more accurate. The contaminated grass didn’t just blacken; it appeared to lose its detail, changing its shape into a blob that only vaguely resembled what it had once had been. Each blade of grass still pointed outward, but even the thinnest green was now a blacker-than-black wide polygon, flickering skyward.
"Ah,” he remarked. “Not good.”
The monster snarled, stepping closer. Adam felt that horrible burning feeling again – this time on his stomach – and finally understood what was happening. Whenever the creature ripped its own skin to open a new mouth, more of its flickering flesh exploded forward like a projectile. The attack was incredibly fast; he could only see it now that the beast was growing closer to him.
Have to go. Adam dashed to the side. He only made it several feet before the monster howled. Two more bursts of flickering inked flesh hit him, this time on both of his legs. He tried to run, but his legs merely trembled once before giving in. It was as if the energy had been completely drained from them.
As he fell, he tightly clutched his backpack to prevent his tablet from being damaged. Adam breathed a sigh of relief when his back collided with a thick tree trunk. His tablet was safe, and this way, he could face the monster sitting down rather than laying in the dirt.
Doesn’t look like I can walk anymore, he thought, far too calmly. Distantly, he realized that he hadn't screamed. Odd. Making noise when injured was supposed to be a primal reflex, wasn’t it? Oh, well. At least I can face my end with dignity.
His grim acceptance was undercut by how annoyingly slow the monster chose to approach. It had immobilized his left shoulder, torso, and both legs – and now seemed content to stalk at him like it had all the time in the world. At no point did it appear in a hurry. If anything, the creature had slowed its gait since.
Why?
Was it afraid that Adam could still escape somehow? No...that didn’t seem right. It almost seemed like it was enjoying, feeding on his fear.
Well, good luck with that. Adam intended on making it a poor meal if nothing else.
“Let’s see,” he said to himself. “I can't walk. If I try to crawl, it'll shoot and kill me. That’s a problem. Hmmmm.”
He considered trying to kill it. Fight it. Hurt it? Frankly, even that much was impossible. His backpack contained a broken phone, a drawing tablet, and some books. Nothing that could injure an otherworldly abomination.
“Should I try crawling for the hell of it?” The idea was...unpalatable, like being force-fed expired meat. Adam hardly wanted to die, but the notion of pathetically squirming in the dirt like a worm was somehow less appealing. There was a difference between clinging to life and wasting the little time he had remaining.
If he had no chance of escaping, he would rather use his last few minutes doing what he loved.
Adam picked up his drawing tablet. I might be dying, but at least this still works. There was always a bright spot somewhere. I can’t draw anything too complex. Don’t think this thing will give me the opportunity.
He looked ahead. The monster was approaching him agonizingly slowly, but it was indeed getting closer to him. Adam considered screaming for help, before noticing that the wound on his torso had eaten into his vocal cords, making it difficult to speak. Guess that’s just how it is. But at the very least...at the very least, I can draw.
One more time.
I’ll put my soul into this sketch.
It was funny. A few hours ago, he'd felt despondent over losing the contest. Without that prize money, Adam wouldn’t have been able to afford rent, let alone his college tuition. His future prospects were either taking on crippling loans, or being evicted and expelled. At the time, he'd perhaps been a tad melodramatic, thinking things like: Eric winning that contest may as well have killed him.
Now it all seemed rather literal. If he hadn’t lost the contest, he wouldn’t have wandered into the old man’s shop. He wouldn’t have gotten sucked into that painting. He wouldn't have been transported to a different world – only to be killed by a monster merely five minutes later.
There was some poetry in that, Adam thought, even if he wasn’t talented enough with words to fully express it. Somehow, that notion made his impending death less painful.
Against his own nature, he let out a low peal of laughter, his ruined voice warbling as it echoed through the treetop canopy. Everything just seemed so amusing right now. Maybe the blood loss was getting to him.
“You know, monster...” he began, in a rasping tone. “Art is a complicated thing. Getting good at it isn't just about how skilled you are. Despite how professors ramble on about the art speaking for itself, CONTEXT really fucking matters. It sets expectations. An amazing artist can provide context with just his art and the title, but even if they aren’t good, it might not matter. If the story surrounding their art is big enough, then that can elevate a piss-poor painting into something better. Something special. Get what I mean?”
The monster didn’t reply. If it had more intelligence than an animal, it certainly wasn’t showing it. Adam didn’t care, continuing to talk as he loaded up his favorite program and created a new layer. At least it was loading fast enough.
“Even a mediocre painting can become a masterpiece if it depicts the thing that killed its artist. People would pay millions for that. So you know...you just might make me famous after I die.”
After a moment of searching, he managed to find his pen. Adam gingerly placed his tablet on his legs, relieved to find that there was enough strength left in them to use as a support.
“So in a way, I have to thank you. Even if I would’ve preferred to be a shit artist who lived a long life, I’ll take the next-best thing.”
Adam had thought about the topic sometimes. Every time he struggled to sleep, he’d wondered what his final art piece would be like. Would it be something he drew knowing it was his final piece? Or would it be a mundane object he sketched before suddenly passing away in his sleep from eating so much cheap, preservative-laden crap? It might even be something insignificant he made before giving up on his dreams and getting a real job.
He’d always hoped for the first option. That way he could burn his life into the canvas, leave his very soul there, like a star athlete’s sendoff game. If he knew he was drawing his last piece, he would work on it for months, tirelessly aiming for a perfection he could never achieve during the span of his lifetime.
Looks like I’m not getting that either, Adam bitterly thought. I’ll go out with a rough sketch of a monster that refuses to sit still. It was difficult to draw something that kept moving closer. The perspective changed too much, which was especially frustrating when dealing with a creature he'd never seen before.
There were benefits to that, though. Adam could make out more details with each step it took. One thing that stood out to him was how the monster’s skin looked closer to a liquid than a solid, snapping into a frozen state when it appeared ready to attack. Constantly undulating, shifting, changing.
Interesting. Now how am I supposed to capture that with a quick sketch? You’re really not making this easy on me, huh? He smiled at the faceless monster, who – even without an expression – seemed to grow furious as it approached. Every few steps, the beast would split open its head-mouth, regurgitating more sharpened flesh at Adam. The attack hurt like a bitch, but none of it hit his drawing arm, so he could take it.
As he drew, Adam struggled to get a bead on the creature’s behavior. It should be able to kill him at any moment, and yet it refused to. Was it cautious? Or was it trying to make him afraid?
Somehow, Adam thought it was the latter. This thing wanted to scare him the same way a normal animal would have craved nourishment. “Am I supposed to go down cowering in fear?” he said, in a weak voice. “Am I supposed to die full of regrets? Is that what you want, monster?"
His smile deepened. "Then I’ll make sure to die laughing at you.”
It was nearly upon him. How much time had passed? Three minutes? Thirty? Didn’t matter. Adam had finished a rough outline of the creature, but hadn’t yet managed to capture its liquid nature. He was out of time. On a whim, he increased the size of his brush on his program, lowered the opacity, and swiped the brush across the screen on a lower layer. Yeah. This will do. He was almost finished.
But not just yet.
The monster snarled. This time, when it opened its mouth, it didn’t stop. The gap continued to widen until its entire head was erased, and the monster’s neck now formed his new jaws. A moment later, its entire body was gone, replaced by a gigantic gap in reality, a darker pigment than any color in existence, floating toward Adam and threatening to swallow him whole.
“A drawing like this isn’t complete without a title,” he muttered, saving the file. “It needs a name to help give context. I’m not so good that it can stand on its own, you know?”
Adam gave a wry smile, as if the monster understood him, and pressed the save button for the last time. He’d picked a good name. Adam didn’t want anyone who found his tablet to think that he’d died afraid. Somehow, his quiet pride in his stubborn serenity demanded to be recognized. And thus he named it—
The Painter’s Last Stand
“I’m satisfied,” he said, drawing a deep breath and putting his tablet aside. “Have at it, monster. Hope you choke on my corpse.”
The monster’s vague, shapeless self leaped into the air and twisted into a different shape—then another—then another—shifting back and forth as if a wave had been sent through it. The creature itself remained frozen midair, unwilling...no, unable to touch Adam. It started to move backward, an invisible force pushing it away, until it suddenly transformed into an impossibly long form thinner than a pencil.
Then, without warning, it leaped towards Adam. He winced in preparation, but no impact ever came.
Instead, the creature flew at his tablet.
“No!” he cried out. “Goddamn it, don’t you dare break it—that’s my last drawing, that’s—!”
The creature’s thin, liquid flesh shifted into a concentrated dark gas. With a final shriek, its form clashed against the glass screen, disappearing. A moment later, it was as if it had never been there in the first place.
All remained still. Adam was alone once again.
Which wasn’t an improvement, honestly. He was still going to die from his wounds, except now his tablet was broken and no one would see his last piece. Hoping against hope, he grabbed the tablet with careful hands. Maybe its internal hard drive was intact, even if the screen was—
The screen wasn’t broken.
Upon further inspection, Adam discovered that his tablet was fully functional. He leaned forward to examine it. Everything appeared fine, but his drawing...there was a layer he didn’t remember adding there before. It was a text layer, hidden beneath the sketch.
THE PAINTER’S LAST STAND
VICTIM: Stained Beast
PLAGIARIZED:
— Stained Ink
He barely had time to process that before everything started to change.
The blood that was flowing freely from his wounds halted, then reversed, slithering back into his body like liquid red snakes. Rather than feeling strange or uncomfortable, the sensation was actually soothing. Flesh knit together, and pain receded. He could feel his strength returning to him with every passing second.
Yet that wasn’t the strangest thing that happened. As Adam watched, he realized that his blood had turned darker at one point. It wasn’t a shade of red anymore; rather, it was a pitch-black substance that didn’t feel anything like it was before. Something different, but also…familiar.
Then, he realized it.
Ink. His blood had become ink.